A view of Australia's detention of asylum seekers and a search for an antidote to the dictum "might makes right"

Monday, October 09, 2006

Howard's end - or "how I won the war and lost everything else"

Writing in The Age, Robert Manne illumines the Howard legacy: "Last week, at Quadrant's 50th anniversary dinner, John Howard effectively claimed victory in Australia's culture wars. The boast was premature but far from empty.

During the past 10 years Australia has undergone a profound conservative-populist transformation. The Howard Government has abandoned the quest for Aboriginal reconciliation. It has ended discussion of the meaning of multiculturalism. It has closed our borders, by the use of military force, to all those seeking refuge by boat. It has adopted a foreign policy of a more uncritically pro-American kind than was seen even in the era of Menzies. And, by its refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, it has turned its back on the international fight against global warming.

A new kind of political culture, even a new kind of Australia, has begun to emerge. How?"